I am on the advisory board of 2 companies and on the board of directors of 1. One way to think of startups as going through the “forever school of learning”. Before MVP you have 4 seasons or primary school, then after MVP, before Product Market Fit, 4 seasons of middle school, then after raise your series A or 3 quarters of consistent revenue growth,… Continue reading Advisory Deck vs. Board Deck – What’s the Difference?

Between 2010-2014 there were 150+ acquisitions (about 30 per year) reported in the technology sector in India. Of these, 100+ were acquirers from India, and 40+ were from abroad. Most of the acquisitions were in the Internet space (outside of eCommerce). Fast forward to 2015 and there have been 21 reported acquisitions already, and it is only… Continue reading The Rise of Technology Mergers and Acquisitions in India, in 2015

I was speaking to a prominent angel investors in the Seattle ecosystem yesterday. He has been pretty prolific, doing over 20 deals in the last 5 years. He does mostly syndicates and has a band of investors he works with. Having been a successful technology executive before, he understands the market and the landscape fairly well.… Continue reading Does Who You Raise Money from Limit or Grow The Size of Your Ambition?

Over the last few years, I have met and connected with over 55% of founders who are non-technical (actually most are technical, but they are not developers). The standard advice I would give them was their role was to acquire users (or customers): A plan to acquire, nurture and grow users (customers) with as little money as… Continue reading 5 Most Important Skills as Startup Cofounder

I had a chance to talk to an entrepreneur yesterday who was building a new SaaS application which I felt was the same as many existing ones in the Retail Loyalty space. The application allowed a small and medium business to create a on-the-fly phone app that gave the store owner an ability to have… Continue reading Being Different Just to be Different is Not Valuable for Startups

Over the last few weeks I had a chance to review 89 of the companies to understand their free to paid conversion and also a chance to talk to 13 companies. What I learned was that time spent on the pricing page was a key indicator of conversion and you can A/B test your pricing page for colors, position of your… Continue reading Pay Per Usage to Pay For Performance in Startups Transition

Yesterday at the #PreMoney conference the most frequently mentioned strategy for deal flow among venture capitalists was the “warm introduction” from an entrepreneur or an earlier stage investor. Since the easiest filter was someone’s capability to both judge you and your idea, most investors were looking for a “previously vetted” opportunity. That did not mean… Continue reading How Many Warm Micro VC Introductions?

Venture Beat reports that Five Across a provider of social community software has been acquired by Cisco for an undisclosed sum. “Based on conversations with three or four different Cisco executives inrecent months, it is clear Cisco sees social networking and the widerWeb 2.0 phenomenon as ways to drive Internet traffic, and thus trafficover their… Continue reading First Serious Acquisition of a Social Community Provider

The question “What do you want to be when you grow up” is a pain to answer for kids as it is for startup entrepreneurs. Most times you just dont know. Sometimes you ask other people in the hope that it will lead to an answer that you can co-opt. Other times it is not… Continue reading How to Set Milestones for Your Startup

Over the last 4 months I have been able to talk to over 30 Chief Innovation Officers and VP’s of Marketing or Technology who are customer’s of Microsoft. These have been largely 30-45 min sessions, followed or preceded by a 30 min call. The main purpose of these session is that “Innovation” and “Disruption” are… Continue reading The Board Level Discussions in the US